LMS Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/lms/ Chief Learning Officer is a multimedia publication focused on the importance, benefits and advancements of a properly trained workforce. Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:00:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-CLO-icon-Redone-32x32.png LMS Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/lms/ 32 32 Ask a learning architect: Is it time to break up with your LMS? https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/08/27/ask-a-learning-architect-is-it-time-to-break-up-with-your-lms/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/08/27/ask-a-learning-architect-is-it-time-to-break-up-with-your-lms/#respond Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:00:55 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=67769 This article was written with a humorous twist, but each of these “advice column letters” highlights a real-world issue you may have encountered with your LMS.

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Q: I’m writing about my learning management system. We’ve been together for almost two decades and made it through some hard times together, like e-learning during the pandemic and emergency compliance training. But I think I’m outgrowing the relationship. My LMS always wants to be the center of the universe, and it’s such a chore to get it to try new things, like external content and mobile learning. I feel like it’s over. Is it time for us to split?

— Conflicted CLO in corporate

A: Dear Conflicted Chief,

You’re not alone in asking yourself if it’s time to break up with your LMS. Even if it worked well in the past, that doesn’t mean your current relationship is still right. It’s time for some introspection. 

Have you found yourself supplementing your relationship with other apps or third-party systems? When you’re with your LMS, do you ever think, “I wish it had this interactive feature, like my collaboration app, or that embedded assessment, like my quiz tool.” Has it gotten difficult to keep track of all of the workarounds needed to get your LMS to fulfill your needs?

Don’t worry; you’re not alone. A few decades ago, it was common for an organization to pin all of its hopes and dreams on a single, massive system. But we’re living in the 21st century. It’s more acceptable than ever to have an assembly of applications that collectively support learning. In fact, the Gartner Group predicts that, by 2023, more than 70 percent of organizations will need a human capital management suite, with various learning apps, to support corporate learning. But a word of caution: You must do this intentionally. Don’t try to band-aid your relationship with short-lived flings. Have a plan. Grow your learning technology family incrementally, and, most importantly, make sure all of your learning applications talk openly to one another. Communication is key!

Q: I’ve only been with my LMS for a year, but I feel like it’s constantly hiding things from me — holding back information. It’s impossible to get the full story from it, and trust me, I’ve tried everything! Why won’t my LMS open up?

– Down in the Data Dumps

A: Dear Data Downer,

This is an all-too-common story, and unfortunately, it may be challenging to change your LMS, especially if it’s stuck in its proprietary ways.

Does this sound familiar: Your LMS puts on a good face — with slick dashboards of student outcomes — but when you try to look beneath the surface, you hit a black box? Do you have to force your LMS to talk, manually prying the CSV files out of it, only to find only the most basic scores and stats inside them?

It seems like you need a more sensitive and transparent platform. Find a digital learning system that’s willing to listen to your measurement needs, collect the data you want, and share it with you. And you shouldn’t always have to initiate. Your learning platform ought to be willing to publish its innermost data without requiring your personal effort each time.

Finally, make sure your learning system speaks your language. Too often, we’ve seen LMSs claim that they’re open, but in reality, they’re bad communicators — only talking in their own made-up languages and expecting everyone else to adjust. Honey, there are a lot of fish in the sea; you don’t need to play that game! You deserve a learning platform that’s transparent, insightful and deep, sharing openly with you in a language you can understand.

Q: I have a confession. I’m only using my LMS for its automated training. My company is big — and I mean really big — so as long as the LMS lets all my employees click through its screens, I don’t care what else it does (or doesn’t) do. Does this make me a bad manager? 

– Stubbornly Shallow Supervisor

A: Dear Stubborn Supervisor,

You’re not a bad manager, but ask yourself: Is this really working for you? Sure, it’s easy to turn a blind eye to usability problems or bloated features, especially when you’re not really engaged with your LMS. But let’s be honest, are you truly satisfied? And how do your workers feel?

The best relationships are built on a foundation of continuous learning. Imagine your company with a culture of upskilling, reskilling and innovation. Research shows that investing in your employees’ learning pays dividends, with benefits like retention and commitment. And you know what they say about organizations with a big learning culture: they’re more productive, faster to market and more profitable — not to mention five times more likely to manage change and engage their workforces effectively.

Even if organizational learning investment isn’t your cup of tea, you could at least picture your workers doing onboarding or compliance training more efficiently—like though microlearning. That tiny change could, for example, earn you around a third fewer general liability issues and a quarter fewer worker’s comp claims.

So, if you feel ho-hum about your LMS, maybe you haven’t found the right system. Open your horizons and find the learning platform — or platforms — that work for your organization. Don’t settle for a loveless relationship — you deserve more!

Why is the LMS in our crosshairs?

There’s never been a greater demand for technology-based learning, and traditionally, the LMS was a titan of this sector — the one-stop shop for e-learning curriculum, courseware, assessments and student management. However, the dominance of LMSs (at least the conventional ones) is waning.

We wrote this article with a humorous twist, but each of these “advice column letters” highlights a real-world issue you may have encountered with your LMS, such as monolithic software packages that lack flexibility, data silos and proprietary formats that ensnare your data, or low-effort integration strategies that fail to capitalize on the potential of learning at scale.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a traditional LMS, or more accurately, there’s nothing uniquely wrong with LMSs or other legacy technologies in this sector. Software modernization is advancing at a dizzying pace, and increasingly, CLOs are expected to translate those IT best practices into our portfolios. In practice, that means a vendor-locked, monolithic, server-based application (like an old-school LMS) no longer passes muster. Modern technology architectures use modular open systems approaches — for plug-and-play LEGO-like interoperability — and disaggregated software services that break apart big-box applications into many little functions that run independently.

Modern software practice has also migrated to the cloud, and with that change, has also shifted toward bigger, shared enterprise systems (versus smaller, more dissimilar local ones). Finally, there’s data. As the saying goes, “Today, every company is a data company,” and I think we can safely say that every significant corporate IT system is a data system. That goes for ed-tech too.

So, does this mean you need to break up with your LMS? Not necessarily, but if you want to stay competitive, your relationship needs to evolve. With a little less satire, here are five recommendations for “couples counseling” with your LMS:

Determine your systems’ maturity. Capability maturity models help organizations gauge the quality of their systems and plan future investments. Typically, these models are built like a rubric, with multiple key performance areas and corresponding five-stage descriptions of their maturity from initial (zero) to optimized (four) levels. You can search online for a model that fits your needs or try the open-access Distributed Learning Capability Maturity Model from the U.S. government’s Advanced Distributed Learning initiative. It includes multiple sub-scales across five performance areas, including commitment, design, human infrastructure, technological infrastructure and data infrastructure.

A capability maturity model provides a thorough understanding of where the organization is, and perhaps more importantly, where it needs to grow.

Find early adopters to help you pilot test new ideas. Once you’ve taken stock of your learning system’s maturity, consider which investments will bring the most value. Is there a relatively quick fix? Or is there a particular improvement that promises to yield major rewards? Similarly, are there places where modernization targets intersect with business goals?

Of course, you don’t have to answer these questions alone! In fact, it’s better to enlist the help and participation of business stakeholders. Working hand-in-hand with them will kindle a sense of shared purpose, better align your priorities with enterprise goals, and foster support for your long-term modernization strategy.

Start small and build gradually, reserving the right to learn along the way. Often, this means developing a compelling minimum viable solution to directly impact your stakeholders rather than trying to solve everything at once. In other words, follow lean startup principles for accelerating product development. And, periodically, make sure to revisit your roadmap (or maturity model) to gauge your progress.

Take a learning engineering approach. “Learning engineering is a process and practice that applies the learning sciences, using human-centered engineering design methodologies and data-informed decision-making to support learners and their development,” according to the ICICLE Consortium for Learning Engineering. Learning engineers take a systems approach, looking across a variety of factors such as organizational context, learning technologies, data, analytics and individual differences to optimize learning outcomes. Search online for a variety of recent books and articles on the topic or join the ICICLE professional community to learn from peers working in this emerging field.

Unlock the power of your data. There are hundreds of corporate truisms about data: It’s the new oil; what gets measured gets managed; from data to decisions. You may be tired of those cliches, but they’re no less valid. And, they apply just as well to learning and development as they do to corporate earnings or consumer behavior. In other words, it’s time to invest in good measurements and meaningful analyses — and to unlock your data from single-purpose or proprietary systems, like old-school LMSs.

The data standard xAPI is the industry standard for capturing, storing and transporting learning, development and performance data. It lets you share and aggregate across platforms, like among an e-learning system, a mobile application and an on-the-job assessment system. Using xAPI — and associated measures and analyses—right has a big impact. One case study from AT&T reported a savings of 670,000 production hours by using xAPI to facilitate adaptive e-learning and ceramics manufacturer Villeroy & Boch claimed an extra $2.92 million in revenue from its xAPI implementation.

xAPI is an open-access standard, which means it has no license fees or propriety barriers, and it’s supported by an active community.

Make friends with your IT modernization department. If all of this sounds daunting, don’t panic! CLOs aren’t expected to be advanced technology experts, but you do need familiarity with modern IT. Make friends with the more technical folks in your office or community; you might find that they’re eager to find early adopters for their own improvement efforts.

Keep an eye on software modernization, in general, looking at trends such as cloud computing, development security operations, cybersecurity, identity management, enterprise business systems and data engineering (At least, aim for a passing familiarity with the concepts.)

More importantly, stay abreast of ed-tech trends — which, as a reader of this publication, you’re already doing. Additionally, the Government’s ADL Initiative provides periodic updates on its research projects and working groups, and it helps organize the annual iFEST conference, which focuses on emerging trends in distributed learning. Deloitte also publishes regular updates on major industry trends at the intersection of IT and human capital, including annual Human Capital Trends and Tech Trends Reports, and a weekly WSJ CIO Journal.

It’s OK to admit that your LMS isn’t enough anymore, but you don’t have to split up entirely. Following these five steps, won’t necessarily rekindle the old romance with your LMS, but perhaps you can build a better, more modern relationship with it — redefining your commitment around a data-centric, open architecture, business-minded future.

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Nissan North America is elevating its L&D offerings https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/09/03/nissan-north-america-is-elevating-its-ld-offerings/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/09/03/nissan-north-america-is-elevating-its-ld-offerings/#respond Tue, 03 Sep 2019 15:54:06 +0000 https://staging.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=60155 Learning and development at Nissan North America, part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, is undergoing dramatic transformation, says Jim Irvine, dean of leadership and business colleges for the automobile manufacturer. That involves getting all three companies on the same LMS, reintroducing digital learning, and redesigning all high-potential and accelerated learning programs.

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Video production: Andrew Kennedy Lewis

Learning and development at Nissan North America, part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, is undergoing dramatic transformation, says Jim Irvine, dean of leadership and business colleges for the automobile manufacturer. That involves getting all three companies on the same LMS, reintroducing digital learning, and redesigning all high-potential and accelerated learning programs.

Read the full transcript of Snow’s interview below:

My name is Jim Irvine and I work for Nissan North America. We’re part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, and I’m the dean of leadership and business colleges, so basically I lead or I help lead the global L&D function.

So, we have a new technology — we’re getting everybody on the same LMS platform. So that’s Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi will join later this year. As anybody who’s ever done that knows that’s a huge undertaking. So for the first time ever we’ll have data all in the same system so we can run reports, we can do all sorts of great, great things.

We’re also reintroducing digital learning, so many pieces of content on the digital front. That really is going to be great because instead of just face-to-face learning, people are going to have … It’s going to be learning for all anytime, anywhere, so mobile as well as their desktops.

This year we’re starting the process of redesigning all of our high-potential programs as well as our accelerated learning programs, so it’s a lot on our plate.

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Nissan North America is elevating its L&D offerings https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/09/03/nissan-north-america-is-elevating-its-ld-offerings-2/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/09/03/nissan-north-america-is-elevating-its-ld-offerings-2/#respond Tue, 03 Sep 2019 15:54:06 +0000 https://staging.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=60155 Learning and development at Nissan North America, part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, is undergoing dramatic transformation, says Jim Irvine, dean of leadership and business colleges for the automobile manufacturer. That involves getting all three companies on the same LMS, reintroducing digital learning, and redesigning all high-potential and accelerated learning programs.

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Video production: Andrew Kennedy Lewis
Learning and development at Nissan North America, part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, is undergoing dramatic transformation, says Jim Irvine, dean of leadership and business colleges for the automobile manufacturer. That involves getting all three companies on the same LMS, reintroducing digital learning, and redesigning all high-potential and accelerated learning programs.
Read the full transcript of Snow’s interview below:
My name is Jim Irvine and I work for Nissan North America. We’re part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, and I’m the dean of leadership and business colleges, so basically I lead or I help lead the global L&D function.
So, we have a new technology — we’re getting everybody on the same LMS platform. So that’s Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi will join later this year. As anybody who’s ever done that knows that’s a huge undertaking. So for the first time ever we’ll have data all in the same system so we can run reports, we can do all sorts of great, great things.
We’re also reintroducing digital learning, so many pieces of content on the digital front. That really is going to be great because instead of just face-to-face learning, people are going to have … It’s going to be learning for all anytime, anywhere, so mobile as well as their desktops.
This year we’re starting the process of redesigning all of our high-potential programs as well as our accelerated learning programs, so it’s a lot on our plate.

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A Whole New World (of Learning) https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/01/03/a-whole-new-world-of-learning/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2019/01/03/a-whole-new-world-of-learning/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2019 09:00:53 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=57373 The end of the LMS as we know it is coming.

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Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin is the founder of Bersin by Deloitte, and an industry analyst and researcher covering all aspects of corporate HR, training, talent management, recruiting, leadership, and workplace technology.

When I began my career as an analyst, I started out studying the LMS market. At that time (early 2000s), learning management systems were an innovative new business application that helped companies build and manage e-learning and track and organize all forms of training. These systems were actually the first practical employee-centric portals.

Fast forward to today. Now we carry around smartphones, watch videos and live streams from a wide range of sources, and communicate through multiple social media channels. We’re all used to nudges, AI-based suggestions and a steady stream of messages coming our way throughout the day.

This change in the way we interact with information has made the original LMS paradigm, that of a portal-based online university, increasingly obsolete.

That said, companies have invested billions of dollars in these systems, which in many cases store some of the most important and hard-to-move data an organization owns. Banks, pharmaceuticals, insurance companies — any highly regulated business — own LMSs packed with employee data, business rules, compliance records and content fundamental to operations.

I was at an industry meeting recently with about 50 different companies. Attendees talked about their new learning experience platforms and said they would be “shutting off” their LMSs in the next few years.

While I hate to say it, the end of the LMS as we know it is coming. Although companies continue to spend millions of dollars each year operating and maintaining these systems, they are often burdensome to manage, hard to use and hated by end-users. Many now sit behind consumer-like front ends built by companies such as Cornerstone, SumTotal and Instructure.

I think it’s clear that the function provided by the LMS no longer belongs in an entirely separate system. Yes, many LMSs are very complex e-commerce, customer education and revenue-generating systems. But the core functionalities of tracking compliance, giv-ing employees reminders of when to complete courses and storing links to online courses really belong in a core HCM system. Workday clearly believes this, and the company is making major progress building its own internal LMS integrated into its platform. SAP, Oracle and ADP still have different applications for HR and learning, but the integration is becoming more urgent every day.

What most companies are doing now is simply “starving investment” in the LMS so they can spend their money on learning experience platforms, new content libraries, advanced VR and microlearning systems, and tools that help people share video and other types of information, collaborate and implement performance support. Products such as WalkMe, EnableNow and GuideMe, as well as tools such as Axonify and Qstream, can deliver training “as needed” without an LMS, giving L&D leaders the option to shift their investments.

Often now when an LMS renewal contract comes up, companies seriously negotiate lower prices or even look at alternative systems. I don’t predict the end of big systems like Saba, SumTotal, SAP or any other LMS vendor overnight. But it’s apparent to me (and to them) that if they don’t advance their technologies to meet market expectations and trends, their new business will start to significantly slow down.

I’m a conservative buyer of technology myself, so I never recommend companies buy unproven tools when their business continuity is at stake. However, when new technologies emerge that provide clear value, companies have to shift their investments.

I use the analogy of mainframe computers, which are still a multibillion-dollar business — just not a growing IT market segment. Similarly, I believe the LMS is on its way to becoming a back-office server, more integrated into HCM over time.

Let’s all get excited about the new world of learning, which I call “learning in the flow of work.” That’s where this world is going, and that’s where the new investment will be.

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LXP: Poised for Center Stage https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/09/28/lxp-poised-for-center-stage/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/09/28/lxp-poised-for-center-stage/#respond Fri, 28 Sep 2018 09:00:33 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=56250 The learning experience market has reached a turning point. The LXP market is projected to grow 150 to 200 percent annually.

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Josh Bersin
Josh Bersin is founder of Bersin by Deloitte, and a principal with Deloitte Consulting.

The recent acquisition of Pathgather, a pioneer in learning experience solutions, by Degreed, a leading content provider founded around the principle of “jailbreaking the degree,” marked an important turning point in the learning experience market.

The coming together of these two visionary companies emphasizes the importance now placed on learner experience, which was once viewed as a “nice to have” bonus of corporate training that came after enrollment numbers, completion rates, time spent and other administrative-focused measurements.

Learning experience platforms, or LXPs, currently comprise a small piece of corporate training spending, about $200 million to $250 million compared with about $5 billion spent on LMSs. However, whereas the LMS market is mature and growing only at a rate of 3 to 4 percent annually, primarily due to product turnovers and corporate growth, the LXP market is projected to grow at a rate of about 150 to 200 percent annually.

LXP market growth is fueled by several factors, the first being learner demand. Employees now have a wealth of resources literally at their fingertips for learning — most of which likely reside outside formal corporate training offerings. Think about how often you turn to Google or YouTube to quickly research a topic. Learners no longer have the patience to wade through online courses to get to the information most relevant to their jobs. They want consumer-like learning experiences with recommendations based on their interests, job roles and career goals. Excellent mobile experiences are a must.

A second driver is the sheer size of the workforce population. There are more than 500 million working professionals in the world and nearly a billion employees overall (factoring in part-time, temporary and side-gig workers). All of them need learning at some point in their job, whether it be for onboarding, compliance or training to use the tools of their trade. So if one considers the potential recurring revenue fees to deliver training to all these people, it is easily a multibillion dollar market.

The third factor is overall disenchantment with traditional LMSs, once viewed as the core of corporate learning. While they vary in their user interfaces, LMSs primarily perform administrative functions such as tracking registrations and course completions, documenting compliance, and managing workflow and training cost allocation. Employees don’t use LMSs that much other than to occasionally launch courses. Additionally, many LMSs are expensive to own and cumbersome to administer. These systems are increasingly viewed as part of the enterprise resource planning ecosystem with IT and HR as their primary users.

Because the LXP market is still in its infancy, it will continue to evolve and likely change shape. As more learning moves to short-form video (microlearning) and more courses are authored by experts and employees, we can expect LXPs to deliver learning straight to work platforms, such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google G-Suite.

Today, IBM Watson can deliver learning through conversations, and several vendors, such as Filtered and Buttlerfly.ai, specialize in connecting employees with experts to help them learn what they need to know. Skillsoft’s Percipio has a feature called ELSA, the Embedded Learning Synchronized Assistant, that recommends content based on an employee’s web activity, and Degreed offers integrations with Slack.

Additionally, the fast-growing marketplace of on-demand digital adoption tools (WalkMe, EnableNow, EdCast’s GuideMe) is impinging on this space with software that recommends instructional content based on job and learning history and functionality that monitors minute-by-minute activity to guide and help learners along the way.

And certainly, learning offers some of the most exciting uses for AI and conversational systems. I fully expect that the LXP will become the platform for some of the most advanced AI-based innovations.

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Justify the Learning Ritual https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/08/22/justify-the-learning-ritual/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/08/22/justify-the-learning-ritual/#respond Wed, 22 Aug 2018 09:00:43 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=53163 Be ready to answer questions about your L&D practices.

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Elliott Masie is the chairman and CLO of The Masie Center’s Learning Consortium and CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity.

CLOs — be prepared! You and your team may be asked to justify some of your most familiar rituals with evidence and business data. Business leaders and even boards of directors are looking for radical shifts in approaches and processes — and learning and training are ripe targets to be examined.

Here are a few learning ritual challenges I have heard in my conversations with senior executives in the past year, as well as considerations for responding should you be presented with similar challenges in your organization.

Does leadership training actually create and keep better leaders — with better business results?

If you are presented with this question, be prepared to examine the concrete skills, competencies and readiness levels that your leadership programs yield. Examine the six-month, one-year and three-year patterns of graduates of your leadership academies.

Imagine running a three-level experiment with the next set of candidates: A third go through your current program, a third are given a grant to buy their own leadership programs externally and a third are not given any program. What are the differences in their performance?

Consider the timing of when a leader is trained (upon promotion, early in their career as a high potential or perhaps one year into a leadership role). Additionally, ask whether you should separate the “induction” dimensions of welcoming people into the leadership ranks from more focused skill development aimed at observable shifts in competencies and readiness.

Does tracking learning help learner engagement, and do we use the data to improve business results?

At The Masie Center, our LMSs collect a massive amount of data about what every learner selects from our formal learning offerings. But we are not tracking most of the content, context, collaboration and resources that workers access from other sources. And most organizations are not using the data from the LMS to radically improve learning options, personalize learning for a specific employee or compare the impact of one program versus another. We track consumption but rarely use learning systems to monitor impact.

It’s worth considering whether tracking the microlearning choices of an employee helps or hinders their natural curiosity. What if employees were aware that their bosses were looking at the web searches they did throughout each day? I would imagine more searches would be made from personal smartphones.

Be prepared to defend or reframe the role that your LMSs have in driving business results.

Do live webinars accomplish higher engagement and bigger business results?

Most organizations have a default duration for live webinars, regardless of content or complexity. Most webinars are one hour long and have only a few activities that take advantage of the actual live presence of employees. What if we substituted asynchronous segments for live webinars? Durations could be stacked for overviews, basics or deeper content, allowing the learner to select their optimal timing and depth of material.

Also consider: If everyone had to answer a few predictive, quick questions to show understanding, how many hundreds of thousands of wage hours would a large enterprise save?

Once again, imagine a split test project with three different versions of content: live webinar, asynchronous only and a blended model. Compare the participation, retention and actual business applications/results that each version yields.

CLOs will likely be asked to respond to additional questions in the near future, as well: To what extent are our learning programs used by workers who are not meeting work expectations? Are many of our programs attended by motivated and already-engaged workers? What are the demographics of those who participate versus those who don’t?

How do we test for potential hires’ willingness to learn? What are our metrics for tracking the success (or failure) of line managers in supporting transfer of new skills to business practice? Who in the learning organization has the analytical data skills to drive shifts in assessment and follow-up strategy? How do we leverage the knowledge of retiring employees to impact business results?

These questions are coming. Let’s be ready and open to answer them.

Elliott Masie is CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity, and chairman and CLO of The Masie Center’s Learning Consortium. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

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The Case for Small Data in Learning https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/05/17/case-small-data-learning/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/05/17/case-small-data-learning/#respond Thu, 17 May 2018 18:55:43 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=42711 To bridge the gap where big data is not serving our needs, small data can offer personal insights and meaning.

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In corporate learning, learning analytics make use of big data to understand learning and learner behavior. Some of the major goals of learning analytics are to help determine the effectiveness of a particular learning intervention, gain insights on how learning supports on-the-job performance, and decide which programs or learning initiatives to implement at an organizational level. Increasingly, LMSs provide learning analytics that mine large volumes of learner data to determine ROI and other learning impacts.

While big data has its merits, it also comes with limitations. By placing a significant emphasis on big data, we run the risk of thinking it is the end-all, be-all of gaining insights into learning.

Here are a few things to consider when it comes to big data in learning analytics:

  • Big data has too narrow a focus. Typically it tracks one thing with massive amounts of information, such as a particular course’s completion rate over a long period of time, to make predictions based solely on that one thing. However, that in itself is not meaningful as it doesn’t answer the question of why certain people did not finish the course.
  • Big data is messy. Big data is essentially raw data being collected on an ongoing basis. It is not clean (as it collects everything digital there is to collect in large quantity rather than quality) and thus is very hard to make actionable. How would you make a decision about whether to change a quiz question based on the number of wrong answers without examining how the learners comprehend the question? Would you rephrase the wording? Get rid of the question altogether? Provide additional support on the learning material?
  • Big data is not easy to analyze. There is a disconnect between how to analyze the data, which data sets to analyze, and how to triangulate different data sets to draw practical and useful conclusions. It can be expensive, and companies often lack the expertise (and budget) to conduct these analyses. To further confuse the issue, LMSs now provide a large array of data collection options, and just because you can collect and measure different data sets doesn’t mean you should.
  • Big data is impersonal. We are more than the sums of our parts, yet big data fails to represent that. In big data learning analysis, people are often reduced to numbers. The generalizations that are made are often incorrect and, in some instances, completely opposite what the intervention should be. For example, when big data shows a learning path is being routinely skipped, we might be tempted to conclude there is a lack of motivation and interest on the learners’ end; however, it may be that the content is the problem, aiming too low- or too high-level.

The Virtue of Small Data

To bridge the gap where big data is not serving our needs, small data can offer personal insights and meaning. So what is small data?

In a nutshell, small data is small enough in size for human comprehension. It differs from big data in the sense that small data can be easily analyzed and compared. It provides a human-scale amount of information that could potentially be tailored to the end users’ needs rather than focusing on the business gains, as in the case in measuring ROI.

In an instructor-led-training session, small data could be interpreted as instructor observations, peer assessments, learner reflections and external consultants’ audits on how well the learning goes. In an e-learning environment, small data has the greater potential to provide more granular insights. It allows administrators and course designers to closely examine each learner’s digital learning traces — where they click, for how long, what they skip, where they go from one piece of content to another, what questions they post and so on. It also can help examine learner-centered questions, such as who is engaged or not engaged in discussion forums, how people can receive better coaching feedback online, how a particular user moves through a particular course and whether that user’s trajectory varies greatly from those of others.

Small data allows for a deeper dive into each learner’s activities and learning patterns. In return, it can dynamically generate real-time recommendations and adaptations. Furthermore, it could potentially create a two-way dialogue between machine and human in what is known as human-computer cooperation. Learning content can be personalized by the end user and for the end user.

Some ideas to consider for the next generation of LMSs and other learning platforms are:

  • A personalized learner dashboard. Many LMSs provide dashboards to display the status of each user’s learning, including the number of courses completed, in progress and overdue. Sometimes they also recommend courses and learning materials based on a user’s learning history. I suggest that it could go one step further and dynamically map out each learner’s competencies and skills (instead of at a course level, it would be based on the learner’s current role or aspired future role). It could also invite feedback from each learner based on their changing aspirations, external learning inputs (e.g., courses taken from a local university) and skills acquired outside the learning platform. Giving learners such data would encourage them to be self-directed and take ownership of their learning and career paths.
  • Sentiment analysis of discussion and other social learning interactions. Sentiment analysis looks at the affective component to determine the emotional tone of students based on their discussion forum postings, Q&A section and other social interaction within the LMS. Analyzing such content would help instructors and facilitators to provide timely feedback. Additionally, sentiment analysis is useful at a collective as well as an individual level. People’s collective feelings toward a particular material within a course are often an indication that something is either amiss or on track, in addition to observing their performances and test scores. Triangulating these data sets is often manageable and provides a richer insight about both the learners and the learning.
  • A deeper dive on learning path. Another useful framework would be to focus on measuring the learning path of each learner by using a learning pathway tool (based on path analysis technique) as it follows the learning path of each individual. The tool allows you to answer questions such as, “Does your learner learn in the sequence as you intended?,” “What are some surprising patterns?” and “Where do they skip and opt out?”

Hand in Hand

Strategically using small data in learning is a lot like a sped-up version of ethnography. It allows you to take a microscopic look at an individual level while capturing as many perspectives from as many small data sets as you can to paint a cohesive picture. Perhaps we should rename small data “human data,” with the emphasis on qualitative rather than quantitative information.

Bear in mind that not all the observations would seem relevant or even make sense at first glance. However, patterns would emerge and it is important to always involve your end users and share your small data findings.

In big data analysis, learners rarely get a chance to see why certain decisions are made based on the collection of their information; it is a one-way initiative. In small data, there is an opportunity to return the data to the owners, to invite conversations and to provide value by sharing these personal learning traces back to the person who generated them.

To be sure, there is no one definitive way to collect and implement small data, nor should we forgo big data in favor of small data. The key takeaway is to recognize the limitations of big data and avoid the temptation to make decisions based on big data analysis alone. As learning professionals moving forward, we must find ways for big and small data to work together to provide a more holistic view of the learning landscape.

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Are You Experienced? https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/02/19/are-you-experienced/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/02/19/are-you-experienced/#respond Mon, 19 Feb 2018 09:00:47 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=41824 A host of pressing business issues sit right in the center of learning leaders’ wheelhouses, like finding and developing future leaders.

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Mike Prokopeak, VP, Editor in Chief

The CLO role is full of exciting opportunities.

A host of pressing business issues sit right in the center of learning leaders’ wheelhouses. Finding and developing future leaders, turbocharging the speed and innovation capabilities of the workforce, identifying critical skill gaps and serving up a compelling and engaging set of personalized learning assets, to name just a few.

But to my mind one of the greatest opportunities is the learning experience.

It’s no secret that more and more learning happens online as digital technology worms its way into every aspect of our daily lives. What once required me to get off the couch and look in a book became instantly available via the supercharged mobile device in my pants pocket. Now I don’t even need to reach for that anymore. I simply shout to the empty air, “Alexa, why is the sky blue?”

In formal education, the digital march continues apace. According to one estimate, one-third of college students are taking at least one online course. And it’s not simply about courses anymore. The learning experience extends far beyond that.

When they want to learn a new skill or figure out how to do something on the fly, most people don’t enroll in a class or search the LMS. They find a video or course online and off they go. Learning is on demand at the point of need and endlessly tailored to their increasingly detailed requests.

The learning experience is about access. But speed is also of the essence. In today’s world, less than a second is the difference between success and failure. And I’m not talking about Olympic competition or high-speed stock trading.

According to studies, web visitors are so impatient that they’ll leave a web page that doesn’t load in two seconds. That problem is acute for companies who sell stuff online but it’s just as important for learning leaders who teach online. Workers don’t leave their digital expectations at the office door when they walk into work. They expect to get what they want when they need it. Learning increasingly happens in Internet Time, as the late, great Chief Learning Officer columnist Jay Cross called it. The principles of user experience on the web are increasingly the principles of learning design.

But it goes beyond how learners engage with digital learning. The learning experience is also about forethought and precision. Chief learning officers are a bit like a nightclub DJ, finely attuned to the needs and wants of the crowd and craftily mixing and remixing content and context, method and modality to keep the beat moving.

Since the days when behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner was zapping rats in his so-called Skinner boxes, we’ve known learning can be uncomfortable. In fact, discomfort is required. True learning stretches learners in new ways. Thankfully, psychologists have come to understand this can also happen without the electric charge. In fact, if the learning experience is done right we sometimes aren’t even aware of it.

Reimagining the learning experience is at the heart of what we’ll be exploring at the Spring 2018 Chief Learning Officer Symposium, taking place from March 26 to 28 at the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Few would argue that what’s required of corporate learning is the same as it was even a short decade ago. Technology and globalization have seen to that. But has the learning experience we provide employees — in person and online — kept pace? That’s a question we’ll explore over three days in Florida.

We’ll hear from some of the most creative and intriguing people in business today. In addition to learning leaders from AT&T, JPMorgan Chase, GE, the NBA, Walmart, Virgin America, Cleveland Clinic and Uber, futurist Amy Webb will tackle learning in an era of artificial intelligence. Best-selling author Dan Heath shares insights from his latest book “The Power of Moments.” Yale professor Zoe Chance will talk about the power of persuasion and Kelly Leonard of award-winning comedy theater The Second City will talk learning and the art of improv comedy.

It promises to be an experience to remember.

Mike Prokopeak is vice president and editor in chief of Chief Learning Officer magazine. Comment below or email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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Peeling Back the Layers https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/02/06/peeling-back-layers/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/02/06/peeling-back-layers/#respond Tue, 06 Feb 2018 09:00:50 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=41657 What makes the layer model so attractive is it gives an organization the ability to take an approach centered on innovation and user experiences.

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Elliott Masie is the chairman and CLO of The Masie Center’s Learning Consortium and CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity.

Imagine adding “layers” of new learning content, context and interaction to your LMS — without a major upgrade or expensive integration.

Imagine being able to offer your learners the machine learning expertise of IBM’s Watson or Amazon’s Alexa by adding a layer of technology that would seamlessly weave through your existing workplace technology.

Imagine your employees who graduated from business programs at institutions like Wharton, Harvard or UCLA being able to add a personalized layer of content, curation and collaboration to their technology workspaces that would enhance their learning experiences.

Imagine a business unit’s ability to offer a gamification layer that would provide enterprise-wide content for a cluster of employees, adding a powerful engagement strategy for a targeted group of the workforce.

Finally, imagine being able to inject a layer of content in the native language of some of your employees. That layer could live alongside or even replace English content for specific learners who want a deeper, native-language exploration of a topic.

Layers are coming!

Sure, we have always had the ability to ask the IT Department or an external vendor to design, test and implement an integration of a second program or application into a learning or talent management system. But that often becomes a deeply complicated process with unexpected expenses and “hard-coded” solutions that may require reintegration after an update to the LMS.

A layer, however, looks and feels more like an app on your phone. Layers will leverage the equivalent of an open application program interface (API) to allow a business unit or learning department to add, inject, weave or enhance a worker’s learning space with new capabilities in a safe and secure fashion.

Let’s explore this more by imagining a layer that would provide Apple’s Siri in the workplace:

  • Assume Apple would offer the power of Siri, a voice- or text-based search-and-assistance tool, to businesses.
  • The entire enterprise, a specific line of business or even a group of employees would choose to add the “Siri Business Layer” into their computing world.
  • Siri would have been approved as a safe, secure and appropriate layer by a software association or “layer registry.”
  • The enterprise, business or learners themselves would select the layer and how it would be seen and used.
  • Siri would then become active and work as an “assistant” in a box, window or mini-screen, supplementing the content from the learning system with additional search items.
  • Siri could be replaced with a different layer or even offer employees multiple layers of search and “TalkTech” tools.

What makes the layer model so attractive is it gives an organization the ability to take an approach centered on innovation and user experiences. As technology evolves in the marketplace, layers would enable an organization to experiment with and compare diverse tools.

Additionally, personalization by business units or specialized roles could be enhanced through a robust set of easily added layers.

Layers would also provide a new incentive to the venture development world, allowing companies to more easily provide demonstration or beta versions of innovations to a global marketplace.

What is needed to make layers a reality?

  • LMSs and TMSs that create a dynamic integration tool for layers: a new API to allow for enterprise security, safety and data sharing that protects the corporate data warehouse while adding new functionality for the worker.
  • A business model for how layers will be priced and marketed; some may be free, some will be directly charged and others may have a sponsored or premium layer pricing model.
  • Layer marketplaces, which may live off the supplier sites of the LMSs and TMSs, where layers could be viewed, reviewed and selected.
  • A mentality shift: excitement about our ability to be agile, experimental and dynamic in adding new technology to our core systems without hassles or major expenses.

Consider this: You may have a dozen or more mobile apps on your phone that you’ve tried but haven’t used in months or even years. Yet the app model has allowed you to be more agile and experimental in how you leverage your phone or tablet. Layers can give you those same benefits — the opportunity to experiment with and compare various tools and innovations — in your organization.

Elliott Masie is chair of The MASIE Center’s Learning CONSORTIUM, CEO of The MASIE Center, and host of Learning 2018. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com. 

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Ed Tech Company Instructure Acquires Video Learning Specialist Practice https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/11/29/39923/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/11/29/39923/#respond Wed, 29 Nov 2017 05:09:49 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=39923 The deal adds Practice's peer-to-peer video coaching and assessment platform to the Utah-based company's growing portfolio of products.

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Instructure announced on Nov. 28 that the company acquired Practice, a Philadelphia-based company that specializes in peer-to-peer video coaching and assessment. Terms of the deal were not immediately available.

“This acquisition reflects our ongoing commitment to provide our customers with experiences that make it easy to learn and improve,” said Mitch Benson, Instructure senior vice president of product in a press release. “When people are engaged and have a way to receive actionable, open feedback and coaching, their competency and confidence levels increase.”

Salt Lake City-based Instructure’s products include Bridge, a software-as-a-service learning management system for corporate learning, as well as Canvas in the K-12 and higher education market and Arc, a video learning product.

The company was founded in 2008 by two graduate students from Brigham Young University and began trading shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015. Instructure reported revenue of $42.9 million in the third quarter 0f 2017, an increase of 43 percent from the prior year.

Founded in 2011, Practice employs 22 people with offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco. Clients include Comcast, Cox Automotive, Domino’s Pizza and UCSF Medical School.

“Six years ago, when we started Practice (then known as ApprenNet), there was one company in the education technology space that we looked at to model ourselves after,” said Emily Foote, Practice co-founder and chief client officer, in a blog post on the company’s website.

“That company was Instructure, the makers of Canvas, Bridge, Arc, and Gauge. Today, we are beyond excited to announce that we are now part of the company that we always strived to model ourselves after.”

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